Many applications can be used on mobile devices, such as wearable devices (e.g., a smartwatch). At a given time, a user may have several applications that are open, but are not being currently used by the user. That is, one or more applications may not be in an active state or in the foreground. For example, a user may have one or more e-mail applications, a workout application, a messaging application, and a timer application (e.g., stopwatch) currently open on their mobile device. However, only one of the applications (e.g., workout application) is currently being used by the user and is in an active state and the other applications can be in a suspended state.
Currently in iOS, all open applications can be browsed by, for example, clicking the home button twice in order to view, for example, a multi-tasking folder or application switching folder. If a first application was currently executing in the foreground (active state), then that application will become inactive so that a user cannot interact with it. In the inactive state, the first application will have a screen that is updated as a user swipes back and forth (e.g. swipe right or swipe left) to view the applications that are currently open in the multi-tasking folder.
However, only the most recently used application will be up-to-date. Therefore, if a user was recently using an e-mail application, and a messaging application and a timer application were used an hour ago, a snapshot representing the e-mail application may be up-to-date, and a snapshot representing the messaging application and the timer application may not be up-to-date when the user views the applications in the preview mode. Specifically, the most recent messages may not appear in the messaging application or the current stopwatch time may not appear in the timer application while the user is viewing the application in the applications preview mode.
In addition, although one or more applications in the preview mode may be up-to-date, the updating of the applications may be a drain on the resources of the smartwatch (e.g., runtime memory, battery, etc.). Further, there may be a delay in providing updated information while in the preview mode.
Thus, improvements for displaying updated applications in an application preview mode is desired. Specifically, it would be beneficial if the applications in the preview mode are placed in a live state as soon as possible. In addition, it would be beneficial if the updated applications are managed so as to not to waste or drain resources of the mobile device (e.g., a smartwatch).